myNav

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

How I fell in love with a villain

I read Tahereh Mafi'sShatter Me at the end of last year in
almost one sitting. I was thirty pages from the end when we had to go to a New
Year’s Eve party. We went, I socialized for an appropriate amount of time, then
I snuck (I like this word way better than sneaked) away, and it hit my
one-hundred and oneth book for the year just before the ball dropped.

Shatter Me was unlike anything I had ever read – a girl that
can kill with just a touch. But it wasn’t necessarily the premise that was so
different and captivating. It was Mafi’s writing style. Wow. She certainly knew
how to keep a person chained to the couch!

I expected equal awesomeness from her follow-up, Destroy Me.
What I didn’t expect was for it to be in Warner, the villain’s, voice. So,
because of the unique circumstances, I checked in with My Heart to make sure we
were still on the same page.

Heart: *leans against closed door inside; wipes sweat from
brow* I think she’s on to me.

Goodreads Summary

In Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me,
Juliette escaped from The Reestablishment by seducing Warner—and then
putting a bullet in his shoulder. But as she’ll learn in Destroy Me, Warner is not that easy to get rid of. . .

Back
at the base and recovering from his near-fatal wound, Warner must do
everything in his power to keep his soldiers in check and suppress any
mention of a rebellion in the sector. Still as obsessed with Juliette as
ever, his first priority is to find her, bring her back, and dispose of
Adam and Kenji, the two traitors who helped her escape. But when
Warner’s father, The Supreme Commander of The Reestablishment, arrives
to correct his son’s mistakes, it’s clear that he has much different
plans for Juliette. Plans Warner simply cannot allow.

Set after Shatter Me and before its forthcoming sequel, Unravel Me, Destroy Me is a novella told from the perspective of Warner, the ruthless leader of Sector 45.

_______________

Destory Me was unlike anything I have ever read. A middle
novel in the voice of the villain. The
wha? The villain. We’re taught to hate him throughout the first novel. He’s
evil. He wants bad things for Julliette, and he wants to do bad things to her.
So we thought. Then Mafi takes our preconceived notions by the nostrils and
shoves them facedown.

And I gotta say – GENIUS!

Warner is still everything he was, but now we get a look
inside his head, and holy crap there’s
a LOT we don’t know. What an amazingly rare experience,
to be front-row-center to a villain’s inner sanctum. We get glimpses into his
past, stomach-churning moments with his monster villain of a father. We see why Warner is the way he is, what made
him, what keeps him, his actual plans for Julliette, his true reasons for
barging into her life, and his undeniable – and strangely beautiful – feelings
for her. We get it all. And Mafi’s writing is just as mesmerizing as I
remember, even in another voice.

Maybe some of you have read books like this. I’ll honestly
say that I can’t remember. My memory is worse than a flea’s. Take a flea’s
brain, cut it into eight equal pie pieces, flick all but one of those pieces
away, and you have my memory. If there are other books like this, TELL ME. This
is such a cool concept. Now my expectations for the next books are all tangled
up. I have no idea who I’m going to favor more, but Destroy Me has definitely
leveled the playing field. It’s anyone’s game now.

Destroy Me is a novella, and is out as a digital copy for
$2.99. Worth the buy! It’s labeled as book 1.5 and will leave you salivating
for the next installment. Thankfully, Unravel Me is due out February 5th,
YAY!

Favorite Lines:

“I, like the rest of the
puppets in this world, am entirely subservient to my father’s will. It’s a
truth I’m forced to contend with every day: that I’ve never been able to stand
up to the man who has his fist clenched around my spine.”

“Empathy is not an emotion
I’ve ever known, but now it’s drowning me, pulling me into a world I never knew
I could enter. And though I’ve always believed she and I shared many things in
common, I did not know how deeply I could feel it. It’s killing me.”

I gotta say, I did. It enjoy Shatter Me. I read it through to the end, but most of the time I wanted to chuck the book across the room. I did enjoy her unusual voice at first, but it got a little annoying after awhile for me. You do make this novella from the villains POV sound interesting though.(oh, and an R&R means revise and resubmit.)

Ah, gotcha! Yes, I did think the whole scratching off thing was a little weird, but it dwindled as the book went on. It's funny how some books can be such a different experience depending on the person. Can't tell you how many books I hated that others loved.

The deeper the psychosis, the deeper the character. Awesome! I think every villain should be as developed, if not more so, than the heroes. I mean, they are just people (most the time), right? --And people all have deeper motivations for their actions. This sounds like an awesome read.

Find me, Like me, Friend me

Author of New Adult Thriller, BITTER ANGEL. I'm a writer, pianist, teacher, avid reader, and chocolate eater. I have a minor - okay, major - obsession with punctuation. I have a severe case of Peter Pan Syndrome, and I write about kids in college because I wish I was still there.